Time to say goodbye, Jeff Cogen

Carla Axtman

Having been away most of last week without much internet access, I missed a good portion of the revelatory brouhaha around Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogen. When last I checked in, reports of Cogen's affair with Sonia Manhas, the Policy & Planning Director for the Multnomah County Health Department, had emerged. The other Multnomah County Commissioners had called for Cogen's resignation and an investigation into whether or not Cogen had done anything illegal was announced by the Oregon Attorney General.

Since then, Manhas was forced to resign while Cogen has so far rebuffed calls for his own resignation. The local media has been in a frenzy, sifting through email and phone records looking for new angles to the story.

And then some folks defending Cogen decided that it was a good idea to invoke the "Mean Girls" angle, a reference to a previous iteration of the Multnomah County Commission, used to tag women on the commission who were considered by some to have acted unprofessionally.

There's probably other stuff, but this is what has stood out for me to date.

First of all, I don't know who's idea it was to throw around the "Mean Girls" thing, but..wow. There can be honest disagreement about people's thoughts on Cogen, but ..really? The commissioners have all acted professionally, with an appropriate ethical standard. Those that used this label should be ashamed of themselves. It's ugly and frankly, has no business being used here. I don't understand why Cogen allowed that to go on. That should have been stopped.

I'm no legal expert and I have no intention of playing as such on this blog. Therefore I have no idea if anything Jeff Cogen did that's under investgation by the Oregon Attorney General has a shot at being found as illegal. I really hope not. My impression of Cogen has always been that he's generally a good guy who wants to do the right thing. He certainly used lousy judgement here. He's human and sometimes humans fail.

All that said, Cogen violated a very important rule: don't get involved with a subordinate. There are very good reasons that organizations have rules like this. Those at the top have power. Everybody else that works within that structure has less power. That relationship dynamic is destined for serious problems, with the subordinate almost always the one who gets the raw deal. If the subordinate wants to end the relationship, are they putting their job at risk by personally angering the boss? If there's a lover's spat and the boss is a person who likes to retaliate, they can use their superior position to harm the subordinate's career. The boss has most or all of the power to wield and the subordinate is at their mercy.

I've heard a number of folks talk about this in terms of gender. This isn't a gender issue. It's a power issue. The rule would be the same if the people in question were a same sex couple and frankly, the subordinate employee would still be in the same situation as Manhas, forced to resign. Let's stop pretending this is a gender war. It isn't. It's a serious power imbalance and Manhas is the victim of it.

Even if Cogen is found to have done nothing illegal, his position as an authority has been abused. In my view it's been done in such a way as to completely damage his credibility to the point where he can no longer be effective in the job as Multnomah County Chair. As much as I love Cogen on public policy, he's made a critical error in judgement. It's cost Manhas. And it should cost him too.

Perhaps he can return to elected life down the road. But for now, he should walk away so that the county can move forward.

By Carla Axtman July 30, 2013